Subversión y moraleja

Pogge’s Global Resource Dividend (GRD) has been criticised as an unrealistic or impractical proposal, but there are also significant normative objections to his argument. Not only could the GRD effects be less predictable than Pogge supposes, but they could also be counter-productive to his main aim. Pogge’s solution to eradicating systemic poverty, that is poverty caused by our failure to assist and our failure ‘not to harm’, has been a global resource dividend. The proposal is based on the idea that the global poor own an inalienable stake in all limited resources, and thus the GRD says that states shall not have full libertarian property rights over the natural resources (although retaining sovereignty), but can be required to share a small part of the value of any resources they decide to use and sell. The GRD would focus on those resources that have a negative environmental impact, and would work as a tax levied at the point of extraction. Meant to be a practical, easy to ...

If we agree with articles 25 and 28 of the UNDHR that everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living and is entitled to a social and international order that guarantees this (and other) rights, severe, absolute global poverty can only be seen as a human rights violation. The violation derives not only from certain agents causing poverty but also from the failure to deal effectively with the elimination of poverty when in a position to do so. It is necessary to go beyond the socioeconomic vs. political rights discussion, looking instead at the conditions under which severe poverty manifests a human rights violation and looking at the agents responsible for it, if any. The distinction between acts and omissions, positive and negative duties, needs to be questioned and both sides bridged for a more fruitful understanding of global poverty as a human rights violation. Let us first look at the side of the violation that occurs when severe poverty is caused. According to ...

In a world in which citizenship is equivalent to medieval feudal status, and in which state borders are heavily patrolled and human movement criminalised, the idea of open borders seems far from achievable. However, open borders are more than desirable from a liberal egalitarian view of justice. Joseph Carens has been one of the most influential proponents of open borders from a liberal egalitarian perspective. Liberal egalitarianism sees all human beings as free and equal moral persons, and considers freedom of movement as a crucial prerequisite for the fulfilment of other rights such as equality of opportunity. Liberal egalitarianism does not require one to deny the importance of freedom of association: we should generally be free to choose our associates, as long as the resulting associations do not lead to unjust, oppressive agreements. The strand of liberal egalitarianism known as luck egalitarianism seeks to reverse all inequalities that are due to brute luck, and thus ho...

Many arguments have been put forward in favor of restricting immigration, from establishing security (especially since 9/11) to dire political realism. Most of the arguments for restrictions are based on the state’s right to self determination, which includes rights such as freedom of association or preserving culture. However, not only are these justifications inadequate in themselves but also can be easily trumped by the human right to freedom of movement and subsistence if we consider the current context of extreme global inequalities and severe global poverty, in which citizenship is equivalent to medieval feudal status. Christopher Wellman has argued for border restrictions based on a state’s right to freedom of association. Seeing states as autonomous bodies and comparing them with private clubs or marriages, Wellman holds that the state’s right to freedom of association includes the right not to associate and the right to disassociate. Although recognising that the state’s ...

The conventional accounts of a just distribution of emission rights not only fail to account for issues of intergenerational fairness and gender distributive effects, but also assume that there is a distributive principle for everything. There cannot be a just distribution of emission rights because emission rights entail a right to pollute, which runs contrary to issues of human rights and global justice. The idea of distributing emission rights derives from the necessity to limit (and reduce) emissions of greenhouse gases as a key step to tackle climate change. Theorists have proposed many different distributive criteria, the most salient being grandfathering, equality and historical responsibility. The principle of grandfathering argues that the fair share of emission for any actor should be a function of its past share of emissions, and thus everyone should make proportionate cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions. Although this principle has been defended for promoting eff...

Carbon emissions do not have value in themselves but only serve to valuable goals; there is no (human) right to pollute. For this reason, talking about responsibilities to reduce emissions rather than emission rights is the most coherent approach for dealing with climate change. The empirical and the normative are deeply intertwined in this questions, as emission rights have a dubious track record in the real world, and thus the starting point must be one grounded in reality. Emission rights have become the mainstream approach for dealing with climate change. Although its fair share is very much contested, the notion of emission rights derives from the idea that the emission of some amount of CO2 should be assured to people as a human right, as we all need energy for production and consumption, and energy is most commonly obtained in today’s world through processes that emit CO2. Emission rights are both appealing to affluent and poor countries. They allow carbon intensive indu...

When I first came to Edinburgh, my expectations of university were mixed and my understanding of the institution limited. Talking with others about what uni meant to us, the ‘I’m just here for the piece of paper’ was a recurring theme. Others argued that attending university was a matter of access, both to people and resources. For others, it was simply the path to academia. Seeing people’s differing expectations, I wondered whether university could have a single purpose. Is University merely a ‘factory of the middle class’, as US activist Staughton Lynd puts it? Overall, I got the feeling that most of us came to uni without really knowing why, viewing it  as another step in the ‘predetermined path’ of life: you are born, go to school, go to uni, get a job. Uni is seen as a means, something we go through to rush down to London immediately afterwards seeking the hottest internship. After the divestment protests last May, I was struck by my limited understanding of how the ...

Since the rise of modern consumerism, people have defined themselves in terms of property. The rhetoric of ‘I am what I own’, deeply embedded in the roots of capitalism, fostered individualization through consumption.  The unfulfilled promises of consumerism, the fulfilment of all our needs, have made mass consumption a self-defeating practice, leading to excesses and waste beyond imagination. The craze of the consumer society could not be better represented than by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, one of the world’s biggest landfills, located where barely anyone can find it.  However, the impact of the 2008 economic crisis on the daily lives of the majority, and on many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through austerity measures and limited lending and investment opportunities has triggered a growth in what has been coined ‘collaborative consumption’. Born in the mid-2000s, the term refers to a socio-economic system built around the sharing of human and phy...

(originally published in Retrospect Journal) Nanking, 1937. Second Sino-Japanese War. The capital of the Republic of China has been captured by the Japanese Army, and what would happen next was one of the most terrifying massacres of modern human history. Director Lu Chuan has been able to rediscover China’s past in his film, making it accessible to all through his deeply emotional, black and white, highly-graphic portrait of the massacre. Dialogues are short and scarce, but the strength of the imagery covers for and exceeds what any dialogue could provide. The film explicitly depicts mass extermination, rape and continuous and conscious violation of human rights; thus having a strong character is compulsory for watching the film without breaking down emotionally. Despite its controversy in China regarding the sympathetic portrayal of Kadokawa, one of the Japanese officials, the film perfectly captures the atmosphere of the moment: the brutality of the Japanese forces, the hopele...

    Al ver que Richard Linklater había decidido tomarse doce años para rodar su última película me quedé pensativo: ¿Por qué lo haría? ¿Para adquirir un mayor realismo? ¿Para intertar retratarse a sí mismo a través de otro? ¿Para desafiar la línea entre cine y vida corriente? ¿Quizá simplemente para llamar la atención?     Sea cual sea la respuesta correcta, yo tengo mi propia versión. Y es que creo que Linklater hace un trabajo increíble desmitificando los cuentos de hadas de una manera no-dramática y desde lo corriente, sin tirar de casos excepcionales o extremos. Mostrando una posibilidad de vida cualquiera, y retratando cómo unos padres (que podrían ser los de cualquiera) intentan seguir una serie determinada de pasos y dar una serie de consejos que supuestamente hay que dar para que todo vaya bien, para cumplir el canon de un estilo de vida que en realidad no existe. Como cuando el padre se da cuenta de que no tiene sentido forzar a los hijos para que le ...

         A raíz de la matanza de los dibujantes de Charlie Hebdo, han surgido cientos de discusiones en torno a la idea de libertad de expresión: qué es, hasta qué punto forma parte de una narrativa hipócrita de Occidente, etc. Hoy quiero escribir sobre la apropiación cultural de conceptos como la libertad de expresión que Occidente muchas veces lleva a cabo, y cómo el ganador en última instancia es aquel que consigue imponer su lenguaje.         Esta reflexión surge como reacción a la manifestación/concentración/mítin político que ocurrió en la embajada de Francia en Madrid el pasado miércoles. Entendiendo perfectamente la situación en aquel momento, y respetando a aquellos que acudieron a apoyar a las víctimas, no pude dejar de ver como, de forma implícita, la idea de libertad de expresión estaba siendo una vez más estrechamente ligada a Francia, como si esta tuviese la potestad de decidir qué es y qué no es libertad de expresión. Esta i...

                Además de una revalorización histórica de la figura del olvidado Alan Turing, la nueva película sobre el genial matemático es ante todo un ejemplo de revisionismo histórico que plantea la cuestión de quién o qué aportó más en la victoria aliada de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Según sea leída, y la película da pie a numerosas interpretaciones, se puede extraer bien un revisionismo de carácter nacionalista o bien otro que plantea la cuestión de tecnología vs. ejércitos convencionales como diferentes factores contribuyentes en la victoria aliada.                A lo largo de la película, sus escasas pretensiones en lo que a divulgación científica se refiere quedan claras: apenas se roza el tema de la producción científica de Turing y cuando se hace es en el contexto del Enigma, la indescifrable máquina de codificación alemana, y como parte de una...